In our cover story last week, Damian Thompson asked whether Pope Francis was steering the Church away from the direction charted by Pope Benedict XVI, noting the prominence given to Cardinal Walter Kasper – “Joseph Ratzinger’s longest theological adversary” – and the sacking of Cardinal Raymond Burke. The suggestion is plausible, but the stronger evidence is not from Germany, but Belgium. It was lost amid the attention paid to the opening of the Holy Year, but in December the new Archbishop of Brussels, Jozef De Kesel, was installed. Therein lies a tale.

In 2009, as Cardinal Godfried Danneels was completing 30 years as archbishop of Brussels, he and the apostolic nuncio in Belgium at the time, Archbishop Karl-Josef Rauber, agreed that the successor should be Danneels’s protégé, Bishop De Kesel, auxiliary of Brussels since 2002.

Pope Benedict XVI did not agree that another in the line of Danneels was needed, perhaps remembering that at the 1985 extraordinary synod of bishops on the legacy of Vatican II, it was an exasperated Danneels who protested that far too much attention was being given to The Ratzinger Report, the book-length interview with Vittorio Messori. Benedict chose instead André-Joseph Léonard, then almost 20 years Bishop of Namur, to succeed Danneels in January 2010. Neither Danneels nor the nuncio were pleased.

Indeed, just months after Léonard’s transfer to Brussels, the now retired nuncio, Archbishop Rauber, gave an incendiary interview to Il Regno. In a most unusual breach of diplomatic manners, Rauber strongly opposed Benedict for the succession in Brussels, criticising Léonard as a bad choice, made over his own and Cardinal Danneels’s objections. Rauber further attacked Benedict, revealing that while he was nuncio in Switzerland, Ratzinger had four times complained about him to the Secretariat of State.

In due course, Léonard would have been created a cardinal after Danneels turned 80 in 2013. But by that time Benedict was no longer pope, and Francis took a different course. In the consistories of 2014 and 2015, he passed over Léonard for the red hat. Both years he appointed Danneels to the synods on the family – leaving Léonard out, despite him being the most senior bishop in Belgium – indicating clearly that he disapproved of Benedict’s decision in Brussels.

Moreover, in the consistory of 2015, Francis elevated Karl-Josef Rauber to the College of Cardinals as one of the distinguished prelates over 80. In ecclesiastical Rome, the public humiliation of Léonard – and by implication, Benedict – could not have been less subtle. The decision, later in 2015, to appoint De Kesel, the one that Rauber wanted back in 2009, to succeed Léonard simply followed the rewarding of a nuncio who publicly attacked a sitting pope. In his own retirement, Léonard gave a recent interview to Famille Chrétienne in which he defended his more orthodox tenure – including a remarkable tenfold increase in seminarians – but declined to speak of Francis in the way that Rauber spoke of Benedict.

The evidence therefore that, despite their warm public greetings, Francis wishes to undermine what Benedict did, is rather stronger than Damian Thompson suggests.

There is another tale to be told though, one of continuity rather than rupture. Ten years ago this month, Benedict’s first encyclical was released, Deus Caritas Est, in which he wrote: “The Church’s deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: for proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia) and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable. For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity that could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being.”

The direct continuity here is easy to see. If St John Paul was the great proclaimer, and Benedict the great liturgist, Francis exercises the charitable service of the Church without peer. Indeed, Benedict’s harsh words for the bureaucratic Church have been taken up afresh by Francis.

The latter’s warnings about the Church not becoming a mere NGO echo exactly what the former taught.

Indeed, one of the great battles of Benedict’s pontificate was over the Catholic identity of the Church’s international charitable agencies. Cardinal Robert Sarah, then president of Cor Unum, wanted a more robust Catholic identity, with closer ties to both the local bishops and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, then president of Caritas Internationalis, fought him every step of the way. Sarah won a remarkable victory. Though he then occupied a rather marginal Vatican post, he routed Rodríguez with Benedict’s support.

It was Francis who then promoted Cardinal Sarah to be head of the Vatican liturgy and worship office, from where he led the effort against attempts to get the synod to modify the teachings about Holy Communion and marriage.

Of the two tales, the rise of Cardinal Sarah is more consequential than that of Danneels, De Kesel and Rauber, all of whom are utterly marginal regarding the new evangelisation in northern Europe.

So is Francis against Benedict? It is plausible to argue just that, but much evidence points the other way.

Fr Raymond J de Souza is a priest of the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario, and editor-in-chief of Convivium magazine

Fairytales don’t tell children that dragons exist; children already know that dragons exist. Fairytales tell children that dragons can be killed. - G.K. Chesterton

Find the courage to proclaim Christ, … and the unchanging truths which have their foundation in Him. These are the truths that set us free! They are the truths which alone can guarantee respect for the inalienable dignity and rights of each man, woman and child in our world – including the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother’s womb. - Pope Benedict XVI

God does not choose the qualified. He qualifies the chosen - Madre Teresa de Calcutá

God gave us ten commandments, not ten thousand. Why? Why not a more complete list of specifics? Because he wanted freedom and variety. Why do you think he created so many persons? Why not just one? Because he loves different personalities. He wants his chorus to sing in harmony, but not in unison - Peter Kreeft

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints. - C.S Lewis

I would like to remind everyone, especially everyone engaged in boosting the world’s economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity - Papa Bento XVI

If medieval people talked less about their own dignity, it is because they were more concerned about God´s dignity; if modern people talk more about it, it is because they are more concerned with themselves - Edward Feser

If you find a perfect parish, you go ahead and join her, it won't be perfect anymore - Matthew Kelly

In fact, a fine distinction could be a flat contradiction - G.K.Chesterton

It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile. G. K. Chesterton

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith - Alexis de Tocqueville

Mittite in Dexteram Navigii Rete, et Invenietis (João 21,6)

Multiculturalism is the doctrine which says that no culture can ever claim precedence over any other. So there can be no hierarchy of values, and no society can uphold its historic traditions and values against any challenge - Melaine Phillips

Napoleon himself announced to the Pope Pius VII that he was going to destroy the Church, to which Pius VII responded, “Oh my little man, you think you’re going to succeed in accomplishing what centuries of priests and bishops have tried and failed to do!”

Nowadays the devil has made such a mess of everything in the system of life on earth that the world will presently become uninhabitable for anybody but Saints. - Jacques Maritain

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience - Clive.S. Lewis

One was the view that stars are personal beings, governing our lives (astrology); the other the general theory that men have one mind between them (marxism); a view obviously opposed to immortality; that is, to individuality - G.K Chesteron

The difficulty of explaining “why I am Catholic” is that there are 10,000 reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. - GK Chesterton

The divide in Western civilization isn't between rich and poor, red vs. blue, or the uneducated vs. the educated. It's God. God is the dividing line. You either believe God loves each of us and grants us inalienable rights or you believe that everything is negotiable including life - Matthew Archbold

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world! - Diane M. Korzeniewski

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him - Chesterton

The two most destructive heresies — and the two most popular — are angelism, confusing man with an angel by denying his likeness to animals, and animalism, confusing man with an animal by denying his likeness to angels - Peter Kreeft

The whole of history is a struggle between two loves: love of oneself to contempt of God; love of God to contempt of self, in martyrdom. We are in this struggle.

There are only three kinds of people: those who seek God and have found Him — these are wise and happy; those who seek God and have not yet found Him — these are wise and unhappy; and those who live without either seeking God or finding Him — and these are both unwise and unhappy. - Blaise Pascal

There are two sorts of people who might be tempted to think of death as a friend: those who think the nature of the human person has nothing to do with the body, and those who think it has everything to do with the body; in short, Platonists and materialists - Edward Feser

To avoid therefore the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state - Edmund Burke on French Revolution

To be or not to be – that is the question”, then the massive medieval doctor (St. Thomas) does most certainly reply in voice of thunder, “To be – that is the answer - Chesterton

To speak of the Christian heritage of Europe bothers me. And for even greater reason, speaking of “Christian civilization.” Christianity was founded by people who could not have cared less about “Christian civilization.” What interested them was Christ, and the reverberations of his coming on the whole of human existence. Christians believed in Christ, not in Christianity itself; they were Christians, not “Christianists.” - Rémi Brague